Restaurant defends the policy, calling it ‘a natural response to demand, and also just a fun creative exercise’
BROOKLYN – A popular Williamsburg brunch spot has introduced a new reservation policy requiring prospective diners to submit two personal references and a five-hundred-word essay explaining “why you deserve avocado toast this particular Sunday,” a requirement management insists is “not excessive, just thorough.”
Restaurant owner Talia Brennerman said the policy emerged organically after wait times ballooned to nearly three hours most weekends. “We needed a filtering mechanism,” Brennerman explained. “A waitlist app was not cutting it. We wanted to know our diners on a deeper level before committing a table to them for ninety minutes of leisurely eating.”
The essay prompt has reportedly sparked a minor cottage industry of brunch application consultants, with at least one enterprising local offering editing services for anyone struggling to make their case compellingly. “I have helped six people get seated this month,” said consultant Priya Ostrander. “The key is showing genuine emotional stakes. Do not just say you want pancakes. Say why the pancakes matter to you, personally, right now, in this specific season of your life.”
Diner Colton Rasmussen, who was accepted after his third submission, described the process as “genuinely more stressful than my actual job application.” His winning essay reportedly focused on a formative childhood memory involving his grandmother’s kitchen, reworked, he admits, “to be about hollandaise instead of whatever it was actually about originally.”
Not everyone has embraced the new system. Neighborhood resident Deja Whitfield called the policy “completely unhinged” while admitting she had, nonetheless, submitted an application the previous weekend. “I am embarrassed to say I spent forty minutes on my references,” Whitfield said. “I do not know what that says about me. I think I just really wanted the French toast.”
Brennerman defended the references requirement specifically, noting the restaurant occasionally calls to verify. “We are not calling to be cruel,” she said. “We are calling to confirm this person is, broadly, a good hang. You would be amazed how much this filters out. Brunch is a vibe. We protect the vibe.”
The restaurant’s acceptance rate currently hovers around eighteen percent, according to internal estimates, a figure lower than several nearby universities’ undergraduate admission rates, a comparison the restaurant has, notably, not disputed and has in fact quietly begun using in its own marketing materials.
The policy has amused observers internationally, with a piece referencing What are the Types of Satire comparing the situation to Britain’s own famously competitive restaurant booking culture, minus the personal essay requirement. Another article citing Political Humour suggested the trend could spread to other cities desperate for any excuse to gatekeep eggs benedict. Commentary drawing on Satire Site proposed the restaurant simply rename itself a graduate program, “which, functionally, it has already become.”
Rasmussen says he plans to dine there again next month, though he has already begun drafting his follow-up essay, “just to be safe, because apparently past acceptance guarantees nothing here.”
Brennerman confirmed the restaurant is now considering a formal waitlist committee, staffed by rotating regulars, to help review applications during peak season. “It sounds absurd,” she admitted, “but so does everything else about running a restaurant in this neighborhood right now, so we might as well lean into it fully.”
Ostrander, the essay consultant, says business has picked up considerably since word spread, and she has begun fielding requests from diners hoping to get into other similarly competitive brunch spots nearby. “This is apparently a real service people need now,” she said. “I did not expect brunch admissions consulting to become a career, but here we are, and the rent does not pay itself.”
The restaurant has reportedly begun archiving a selection of its favorite submitted essays, with plans to display anonymized excerpts on a small bulletin board near the host stand, an idea Brennerman calls “a fun way to celebrate the community, and also, frankly, a little bit of free content.”
Whitfield, still processing her own successful application, says she has started helping friends draft their own submissions, treating it as a kind of informal side hustle. “I have a decent hit rate now,” she said. “Three out of four friends I helped got seated. I might actually be better at this than my day job, which is a strange thing to realize on a random Tuesday.”
Brennerman confirms the restaurant is fielding inquiries from at least two other Brooklyn establishments interested in adopting a similar system, though she cautions that “the essay requirement only works if people actually believe you might reject them, the moment it becomes a formality, the whole magic disappears.”
A local food writer covering the trend suggested the essay requirement may simply be an elaborate, self-aware bit performed for an audience that already expects a certain theatricality from Williamsburg dining culture. Brennerman neither confirmed nor denied this interpretation, saying only, with a small smile, that “the pancakes are real, whatever else people want to say about the process.”
The restaurant’s host stand has reportedly become something of a minor pilgrimage site itself, with rejected applicants occasionally stopping by just to see the podium where their essays were, presumably, judged and found wanting. Brennerman says she tries to be gracious about it. “Rejection is part of the brunch journey,” she said, apparently without irony. “We have all been there.”
For more gatekeeping dressed up as quality control, see ClickHole.
Additional coverage at What Is Satire?.
SOURCE: https://bohiney.com/